I'm not sure if anyone has seen these. These videos are designed to show at least semi historically accurate moves that can be used as inspiration for game designers.
Other than the actual movement of the weapons, they also do a decent job of exploring realistic looking pauses and ways to broadcast attacks without being immersion breaking.
Some of them are better than others but there's probably some inspiration to be found in here for the animators.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=medievalcombatreference
I think the reference is for any/all the videos on the results page. I'm anticipating that with the upcoming alpha testing the animations will be crude at first and will be expanded in detail with update after update.
I particularly want my Halfling Ranger to (eventually) be full of flourish and accentuated actions, enough flair to charm the most aloof lady Ogres.
Ranarius said:The link is broken, and when I copy and paste the whole thing it goes to a search result, not a video. Not sure which video you're referencing :)
I'm just referencing the group of videos as a whole. This one is done particularly well https://youtu.be/_xzy4Lem6os
The two main areas games typically fail with combat animations is the idle 'cool down' and attacks being simple attacks. In a real fight, there needs to be movement, and feints, not just standing around. Also, simple attacks are greatly overused (especially with more nimble weapons). Most fighting is an initial action meant to draw a response, then the actual attack. Interesting attack animations are important but the effect is completely ruined if the characters are just standing around otherwise.
I also hope that actions draw a visible response (attempting to parry an attack), at least when the target isn't already in an attack animation. It looks fake to not ever see any attempt to block.
I also hope that animations will take into account character model size, but that would probably require tech that aimed / adjusted animations. An attack that hits a dwarf shouldn't look like it went over his head.
As a longtime epee fencer, I do have a keen interest in the animations. I especially hope that there will be a fleche attack ability where you suddenly attack with a run past your opponent.
This has been a 'thing' since pencil-and-paper RPGs.
Playing Dungeons and Dragons many years ago, most players are a little confused when faced with combat 'rounds' that last one minute, yet they appear to have one 'strike' during that combat - one roll of the dice with a chance to cause 'damage' based on your weapon.
Of course a dungeon master will explain that the rules are, of course, representative of a wild combat, in which your character will be advancing, retreating, parrying, feinting, even briefly resting, and the one roll and damage number represents the effect of that whole minute's combat, not just one strike.
Of course, things can get much more complex than that in D&D, but the essense was it is, of course, requiring a lot of imagination and filling in the blanks and is a very abstract analogy for 'real' combat.
Fast-forward to computer games and you can actually see the characters. So we should see them advancing, retreating, parrying, feinting, rolling, jumping, falling, resting, etc. right?
Well, just imagine the animations and the AI necessary for a computer to adequately reproduce a combat even between two entities, never mind a party and several monsters. It's simply impossible or, at least, totally impractical - prohibitively expensive - to develop such a thing.
There is, of course, like everything, a middle ground. A representative analog to the combat. Especially in a tab-targetting game, not an 'action combat' game, the movements and animations are highly 'representative' and not realistic.
Yeah, it's nice to see some variety in 'default' combat moves between the specific abilities you trigger, but I'm really not wanting devs to put too much effort into something that will always be a simplified representation.
To reply to the OP, it would be great if the main abilities make use of 'realistic' moves, since it will no doubt make things feel more 'real'. Or perhaps they should be 'inspired' by real moves, since, as we know from theatre and movies, exaggeration can be more entertaining, if it's not too unrealistic. Let's face it, very very few of us know anything about how 'real' weapon combat happens.
As long as it is satisfying and conjures the feeling of combat, and isn't too jarringly surreal, then *shrug* I'm happy.
disposalist said:Fast-forward to computer games and you can actually see the characters. So we should see them advancing, retreating, parrying, feinting, rolling, jumping, falling, resting, etc. right?
Well, just imagine the animations and the AI necessary for a computer to adequately reproduce a combat even between two entities, never mind a party and several monsters. It's simply impossible or, at least, totally impractical - prohibitively expensive - to develop such a thing.
As long as it is satisfying and conjures the feeling of combat, and isn't too jarringly surreal, then *shrug* I'm happy.
Exactly. 'Satisfying' is very subjective, but so long as you can directly correlate a 'prime*' action to an animation where they occur together I think it makes combat realistic.
Where I have problems is when you have multiple players attacking a single target and that target spends all its time reacting to hits and rarely doing active attacks. You see this a lot in raids where the boss just sits there having seizures and rarely actually attacking. I'd rather see the NPC animations only showing attacks and not reactions as the attacks (and their corresponding damage numbers) are more important.
*By 'prime' I mean a deliberate, active, attack. Overhand Strike, as an example, would be a deliberate, active, attack. Something that is a passive skill triggered thing, like a double/triple attack, parry, riposte, would not need to be animated as the time constraints of actually performing a triple attack would be far too long.
True, enemies spasming under multiple attacks is definitely one of those jarringly surreal thing. It would be both more useful and more realistically to see their prime attacks. An enemy that can take dozens of hits without dying would keep fighting and just suffer the hurt.
And the same goes for players, yup. To activate an attack and not see it happen because you were being hit or performing a parry or riposte would be weird and unhelpful.
Along with making animations 'pleasing' they need to actually provide useful feedback for what is happening in the combat.
It's a tricky balance.
Maybe they only react to getting hit by critical hits (or damage over a certain percentage of their overall health if there are no crits). That would limit the amount of defensive reactions the mob makes, but still show them off a bit.
All minimal, or "regular" damage attacks the mob simply shrugs off since each one individually really doesn't do much anyway.